Dune HD SmartBox 4K Plus | Ultra HD | HDR | 3D | Media Player and Smart Android TV Box | 2 USB, HDMI, A/V, BT, WiFi 5GHz, Ethernet, MKV, H.265, 4Kp60

I have a large -- 2tb -- library of videos in various formats. The Dune allows me to connect two hard drives, and play on any tv with an HDMI cable. It's worked in the US, Canada, Japan....Moreover, if you stop and shut down, it remembers where you left off.I used to use a WD player; this is light-years ahead.

My ancient WDTV player finally gave up the ghost after more than a decade of service. I always loved Western Digital's media players for local NAS files because because they are capable of playing most every video file format.Unfortunately, they are no longer being manufactured and most used models are prohibitively expensive and come with no warranty, so I went on the hunt for something different. I was about to pull the trigger on an Nvidia Shield, when I came across the Dune product line. I was unfamiliar with the brand but they came highly recommended on A/V internet forums, so I took a chance on this SmartBox 4k Plus. It is the least expensive Dune HD device, but for my needs, it fit the bill perfectly. It plays everything the old WD did and more including ISO images.A word of caution, though: this isn't a streamer. If you're looking for a Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. box this ain't for you, but if you have a NAS setup or USB external drive with hundreds - or thousands - of movies and TV shows you need a player to connect to, look no further than this little guy.

I wanted a player to access my movies on a hard drive. This unit works great for that.I have not been able to get it to play DVDs from an external USB drive, could be my fault, but I can live without that feature.I put it side-by-side with a Roku player and ran the Netflix app. The Roku was faster to load and the interface was easier to use. The picture quality seemed about the same with both units.

This review DOES NOT apply to: Dune HD SmartBox 4K Plus which I give 4 stars to. Amazon tends to lump together all reviews for products from each company.***************This review is for the Dune HD Homatics Box R 4K Plus Android TV 11 that I am returning.You cannot go through the setup process without using a Google account. You can create an account and later delete it but it will not complete setup without the account. Google already knows too much about us without adding to their database.I wanted it to watch movies stored on my WD NAS servers, but it doesnt appear to be set up to do that without installing 3rd party apps. The Dune HD I already have allows me to navigate my file system in a manner similar to Windows. But the DVD player software in the Dune HD isn't very good. Also, I have to do a Full Reboot every time I turn it on or else it doesn't see my WD NAS servers. I was hoping the bigger Dune player would solve the problems, but it doesn't so I'm returning it. I don't need more Google spyware.

I've been using a WDTV for YEARS. In fact, I own 5 of them and only use one, so I have backups. However, I have been looking for a replacement for some time and nothing I've tried works as well for me. Most of my issues are centered around the user interface and how it sorts the movies/TV shows and how easily I can browse through and find what I want. While the Dune player works very well and is easy to set up, it doesn't quite manage to work in a way that is conducive to my usage.Here are my problems:Support: Support is kinda weak. They don't even have a community forum, instead referring you to avsforum and a *thread search* (not even their own section?!) that is, more often than not, useless. Their own support info is pretty basic and probably good enough for someone who just wants to plug it in and go but anyone wanting to do something past that is going to run into a wall. More info on that below.Documentation: This is a joke. I received what amounts to a folded quick start guide and that's it. No support info or anything other than the website address. From what I've been able to figure out, there is a whole lot you can do to customize it and that's exactly what I want. Unfortunately, they never really give you all the info. A good example of this is the ability to use a file called "dune_folder.txt" to modify how your folder is viewed. Sadly, the how to text that you have to dig to find online only gives you the bare minimum and doesn't even give a full list of options. This is pretty much how it goes with everything about this device and company.Local Network Browsing: It's there and it works well with almost no setup. Local Network browsing has been WDTV's greatest advantage. Many streaming media boxes don't allow for local network browsing via the folder/file structure you've created. At best, they want you to point them in the direction of your files so it can sort them for you. While that may be great for some, for me it's a non-starter. I have too much stuff to have to go through pages of movies just to find part 2 of a series. I like my structure and I'd like to keep using it. So again, the Dune allows for that. Here's the bad part - you see everything. All files in a folder are shown. This means if you have subtitle files and artwork, you'll have to pick through it to find the video file. This is something the "dune_folder.txt" file can do, hide file types you don't want shown. With their updates you can even set a single, properly configured dune_folder.txt file in the root folder of your network share and it will hide everything you tell it to. It took me forever to find that info in their horrible text file (dune_folder_howto.txt - a quick search will find it).The remote is weird. Like super detailed but poorly laid out in a way only an engineer could make happen. Honestly, if you're going to make it this complex, you really should consider a backlight. Mostly though, my issues stem from the odd layout of keys. the play/pause/rew/ffw/stop buttons are located almost at the top and are ordered oddly. They are in two rows: 1st row: ZOOM/REC/REW/FFW 2nd row: PLAY-PAUSE/STOP/PREV/NEXT. TBF I'm nitpicking with that part. The real issues is that most of the buttons are the exact same size and are so close together it's hard to tell which one you're about to press without double-checking constantly. All-in-all though, it's a fairly sturdy remote with buttons to do pretty much everything you need with a few exceptions. I've found that using the phone app with the remote makes some things much, MUCH easier (like fixing indexing issues for movies, etc.).Here's what's good:Setup: Super simple. It practically started working as soon as soon as I turned it on. It even came with an HDMI cable and international plugs for the power supply.GUI: It's very nice. Much more so than most others. And it's fast. I'm a fan in general terms. My Collection is visually beautiful and works well within it's obvious limitations. Metadata scraping seems to work well enough, although, as noted above, the sorting order/grouping needs fixing IMHO.Playback: It's fast. I hit play, it waits a beat and then it's off. You can even choose the method of playback (ex. Kodi player, system player, etc.). What I love the most is the ability to move through the videos in multiple ways. You can fast forward, pick a spot OR (my personal favorite) is to use the numbers to jump to a spot based on the what percentage of the movie time you'd like. Basically, just hitting '5' gets you 50% of the way through the video. Hitting '2' gets you 20% of the way through, etc.. It's fantastic. Seriously.The remote. I know I gave it some heat but it's really pretty nice. There's a serious learning curve for it though, so don't be discouraged. Although I wish it was a tad wider with a bit more space in between half of the buttons, it works really well and has lotsa options. They've even baked into the UI plenty of help over which buttons to press when it's not obvious.Final thoughts:I'm going to keep using my WDTV for now and play with the Dune to see what I can do with it. If nothing else it will end up as a great alternative if all my other boxes die or stop working with my network. In the meantime, I'm going to continue looking for other options.I do really like it. I just wish they put more effort into documentation and community support. I would recommend this to other nerds like myself but I'd never do so for someone like my parents. To be fair, it may be great if all they plan on using it for is playing videos off a flash drive or something.UPDATE:I've been messing with it pretty heavily and discovered a couple things:The new beta firmware is awesome compared to the current firmware. It ties in the My Collection into the network shares and makes it look great with one caveat - indexing everything can be time consuming. All information about your videos is stored locally which is awesome AND horrible since I've found NO WAY to back that info up... It's taken me 4 or 5 days just to get my stuff 75% properly set. I shudder to think what could happen if it crashes or dies.I may be wrong about this but I believe it uses a proprietary scraper db that in turn uses other services to populate it's own database. I say this because I've notice that some things obviously come from a specific source but when you update that source, it doesn't update for you. Even after a few days. This COULD be a problem if their service ever goes away. If I'm wrong, then I'm panicking over nothing... But after my WDTV started boot looping because a service went away. Accuweather finally killed the WDTV specific server for weather and it took out half the WDTVs still out there until a solution was found. It could have been worse.With the last paragraph in mind, companies should stop doing stuff like that if you can't change the configuration on your own.

It plays ISO image files! This so much easier than ripping to mp4 etc. And sooo much more convenient than shufgling through DVDs and poking them un and out of a player. Streaming is not an option for me so this is great.Setup was quick and easy. The interface is intuitive.The only ( minor( complaint i have is that you have to point the remote control pretty accurately or it doesn't work. Otherwise, super device. Hopefully it lasts.Definitely recommend. Other cheaper players do not play ISOs.

This player worked okay, but there are much better alternatives, including some software options like Nova Player and Plex. The software options also include better information about your videos. Nova and Plex both include access to the IMDB database which makes them substantially more appealing. Finally, Nova Video Player and Plex are both free.